PSVR2 just got a game-changing update, but Sony’s keeping quiet about it

If you bought Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset in the Black Friday sales, or have one kicking around already, it's about to get a massive upgrade.

It's the kind of upgrade that you'd expect Sony to be shouting about from the rooftops too, but has actually been launched fairly quietly.

It signals the arrival of hand tracking and according to UploadVR, Sony is demonstrating the feature in its booth at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 exhibition. An accompanying information sheet says that it's "available with the latest SDK of PlayStation 5".

An SDK is a software development kit, which is what developers use when they're making games and apps.

What's so great about PSVR2 hand tracking

As lovely as the PSVR2's controllers are, they're still controllers. Other VR headsets from firms such as Meta and HTC can manage without them, and that makes apps and games much more immersive.

According to the SIGGRAPH information sheet, the new feature "tracks the position and posture of the PSVR2 user's hands" and no additional hardware is required. It reads gestures at 60 fps with low latency, allowing software to display hand movements smoothly. It can recognise 12 different types of gesture.

The document also says that the feature can provide the game or app with information including the position, posture, velocity and bounding box for each joint in each hand.

I've been very frustrated by the PSVR2, myself.

I ended up selling mine because, for me at least, there weren't enough titles to keep me hooked on the headset.

But if this feature is indeed coming soon – UploadVR has asked Sony to clarify what's going on but hasn't yet had a reply – it could mean more games and apps coming across from other platforms as well as more interesting titles generally.